


i was busy sleeping with you

by Soliloqueenie



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, I don't know hwo to tag fics besides obvious triggers and content and that's a FACT, I mean its kinda fluff theres a touch of angst I suppose, is it? I dont know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:02:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24420259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soliloqueenie/pseuds/Soliloqueenie
Summary: It’s an odd feeling, going from alone by design to suddenly being thrust into knowing, really knowing, a group of people.  If Beau thinks about it too hard, it gives her whiplash.   It’s not painful, exactly, it’s not like getting hit, it’s more like being slowly boiled. If you’d told Beauregard Lionett before all of this that she’d know and be known, she would have hit the road faster than a lightning bolt, but it happened.  All natural and slow and unexpected.She’s grateful.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 6
Kudos: 85





	i was busy sleeping with you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just very soft for them and they're very soft for eachother also this is the result of the discord having a discussion about beaujes cuddling headcanons the other day, because they were lovely and killed me dead.
> 
> I'm @soliloqueenie on tumblr come chat !!! Prompt me if ya want !!! Thank u archdyke for the beta and caddy headcanon help ily <3

Beau is “meditating”.

And thinking.

About Jester, mostly.

No, actually, fuck you, she’s thinking about lots of things.

It’s an odd feeling, going from alone by design to suddenly being thrust into knowing,  _ really knowing _ , a group of people. If Beau thinks about it too hard, it gives her whiplash. It’s not painful, exactly, it’s not like getting hit, it’s more like being slowly boiled. If you’d told Beauregard Lionett before all of this that she’d  _ know  _ and  _ be known _ , she would have hit the road faster than a lightning bolt, but it happened. All natural and slow and unexpected.

She’s grateful to be known. Mostly. And the things she knows about the rest of the Nein give her relationships with them a tangibility and permanence that’s strong enough to last through the times when she’s angry with them.

She knows Fjord rubs his chest when he’s nervous, and that Yasha stumbles over Common phrases and idioms but has an excellent memory for songs. Veth won’t cuddle if she’s awake, but anyone within a foot of her sleeping body will wake up with a hand or a foot not  _ quite _ resting on them, just touching. She knows that Caduceus would sleep on the floor in a pile rather than in any available bed. She knows this because he told her. It reminds him of home, where he and his siblings would build forts and sleep in a great big pink and teal slump. Sometimes, right before Caleb goes blank in a fight, some part of his brain has enough wherewithal to summon Frumpkin to his aid, and Beau has learned to watch gratefully for the blur of the fey-cat on the occasions when she can’t spare a moment to get to Caleb’s side.

And Gods, Beau knows things about Jester she’s pretty sure she doesn’t know about  _ herself.  _ Beau knows what Jester smells like, what her different laughs mean, the angles she sticks her tongue out at when she’s drawing and not thinking about being observed. She knows that for all her expressiveness, Jester tucks her  _ real  _ sadness away where no one can see, and Beau has to go digging for it. There’s a certain way Jester’s tail swishes, when she’s annoyed or anxious and trying not to mention it, low and sharp above the ground, and Beau’s made it a habit to notice.

She’s learned, recently, that Jester giggles and sighs after particularly long kisses and likes to sneak her fingers under the back of Beau’s shirt to pull her closer. She knows how Jester sleeps, the way her words elongate and deteriorate when she’s trying her best to tell a story but she’s absolutely going to knock out before she finishes it. Jester snores a little, which Beau finds hopelessly endearing, and she’s chatty when she’s having vivid dreams. It’s the best kind of morning alarm- waking up to Jester’s voice next to her groggily sweetalking some dream creature or another.

Right now, Beau is cross legged on the floor of their room in the Xhorhouse, and Jester is curled up next to her on the floor rather than the bed, passed out with her head on a pillow and the end of her tail wrapped around Beau’s left thigh. This is another thing that Beau knows about Jester; she doesn’t like to sleep at all if she can’t hold on to someone.

The soft, cool pressure of Jester’s tail around a part of her is so familiar now that sometimes, when Jester does it when they’re out and about somewhere, Beau doesn’t notice and yanks Jes’s tail when she tries to walk away. Which always earns her a glare, which is  _ not  _ fair, but whatever. Beau’s opinion on Jester’s affectionate use of her tail has changed, a  _ lot.  _ The first time, back in Trostenwald, as they lay on the first bed they’d shared, when Jester had reached over mid-conversation to slip the end of her tail around Beau’s ankle, Beau had jumped about three feet into the air and blurted out a bunch of things she didn’t mean before settling, lamely, on “that’s a little weird, sorry”. And Jester, to her credit, had taken that mostly in stride.

Jester touches everyone with her tail while she’s chatting, while she’s joking, when she’s planning something, but she hadn’t tried to hold on to Beau in her sleep again until months later. They’d been two days out of Shady Creek Run, and Jester had been different. Well, she’d been different ever since, actually, but for those first few days she’d been  _ worse.  _ Quiet, jumpy, and uncharacteristically irritable. Beau had been licking her own wounds, and she’d been irritable too, and deeper into Nott’s neverending flask than she’d meant to be, but she still remembers most of that trip back to Zadash with perfect, razor-sharp clarity. Some moments even more than others.

_ Beau can’t sleep. She’d left to relieve herself and stayed outside of Caleb’s weird dome for a good half an hour longer than necessary just to run through drills half-heartedly under the stars. The crispness of the northern air is such that it stings just a little to breath if she breathes hard, and right now? That feels good. But she’ll regret it in the morning if she doesn’t sleep, so she makes her way back into the dome to try and bully herself back to bed. Beau steps over Caleb and Nott and starts to tuck herself back into her bedroll when she freezes, abruptly. _

_ Jester is awake, glaring Beau with the blanket pulled up over her nose so all that’s visible is a wide, teary, and very accusatory pair of eyes. _

_ Beau fights down the urge to get defensive. “Uh. Hey, Jes.” _

_ The blanket falls away. “You were gone.” Jester wipes furiously at her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is curt and small.  _

_ Guilt. Beau sucks in a long, harsh breath. Because of course Jester would notice. They sleep so close they’re practically touching through the layers of bedroll between them, and Jester hasn’t slept through the night since the Sour Nest. “Shit. I’m sorry,” she scoots closer, and bumps their knees together through their blankets. “I, uh, I couldn’t sleep.” _

_ The look Jester levels at her says ‘yeah, me neither’ clear as day, but after a second it softens. “Um, that’s okay. It’s okay.” Jester worries her bottom lip between her teeth. Beau can see one of her fangs poke out and dig into her skin, and that’s….you know, that’s cute. Endearing. She’s not quite composed. A few tears fall down the side of her face and onto the bedroll underneath and Jester brings the blanket up to swipe across her eyes again. “I understand. I was just worried.” _

_ “Yeah, of course,” Beau soothes, awkwardly. She hums softly for a second to fill the silence that follows, and then steels herself and lifts the edge of her blankets. “Wanna come over here?” _

_ It’s usually Jester who asks, but it’s nothing they haven’t done before. It’s familiar. Jester flashes her a soft smile and nods. “Uh huh.” She scoots in, tugging her own bed things closer. She’s practiced at unfastening her own bedroll so they can combine theirs with ease, and she does it now, quick and businesslike with minimal sniffles, and then she wriggles right up next to Beau and presses herself into her side.  _

_ Jes lets out a long, shaky breath, wrapping both of her hands around one of Beau’s arms. Beau’s usually fidgety, but she finds herself uncomfortably still, just sort of stuck under the weight of the last week. She’s not sure what Jester needs. She’s not sure what  _ she  _ needs, actually, either. Jester is rubbing her nose back and forth against the skin of Beau’s bicep, which is distracting, but beyond that, Beau can feel her teary, halting breathing start to even out, even as her own heartbeat slows and thinks that maybe, even if neither of them know how to ask for help, they can give it to each other anyway. She feels a little lighter, enough that she can turn on her side and sling her other arm over Jester’s shoulders. And that feels a little better, too. _

_ Long after Jester’s knocked out again, Beau is still awake, so she’s awake when Jester’s tail wriggles it’s way between her calves and winds around her ankle again, and it’s definitely still weird, but she doesn’t mind this time. Beau’s a light sleeper, so she also wakes up in the morning when Jester grabs her tail at the midpoint and  _ yanks  _ it away with a muttered apology.  _

_ Beau pretends to sleep through it, because she’s unsure how to tell Jester that she’s changed her mind about it, but she feels bad. _

_ The next night, when Jester crawls wordlessly into her bedroll again, Beau sits up, reaches for Jester’s tail, and then lays it over her calves awkwardly, clearing her throat. “Um. If it helps you feel better, you can, like, hold on to me. If you want.” _

_ The heart-shaped end of Jester’s tail skitters down her shin and then stills. Beau looks up from watching it to see Jester sitting too, watching her with a rare look of caution. “Are you sure? I thought you don’t like it.” _

_ “I don’t mind,” Beau answers honestly. “And I get it, also.” She leans forward to bump their shoulders together. “This way I can’t sneak off again. It’ll make me get a better night’s sleep, honest.” That last part’s not quite true, because Beau hasn’t been sleeping through the night either, and she’s pretty sure nothing will change that in a hurry, but it’s a white lie. Jester doesn’t have to know. _

_ “Okay.” _

Every time Beau’s brain plays through that memory again, it’s with more fondness. It’s not like they’ve talked about it again, but since then, every night that they’ve been close enough, Jester’s tail finds its way around some part of her, and honestly, Beau’s starting to feel like the need for it is mutual. Jester passes out in Yasha’s bed every now and then and Beau usually has to either wake her up or join them, because sleeping without Jester’s tail curled around her ankle, or her thigh, or her wrist, or sometimes her waist- it feels alien, now.

Lots of things feel alien without Jester now, actually. And again, Beau’s not sure when  _ that  _ switch flipped, but she’s grateful. 

Jester stirs and Beau cracks an eye open to watch her stretch a little and then sigh in her sleep. She reaches out with one hand, searching until she finds some part of Beau (her knee, as it happens) to rest it on and Beau’s heart squeezes in her chest.

Okay, so maybe she’s not thinking about lots of things. Maybe she’s just thinking about Jester.

Maybe Beau doesn’t really  _ get  _ meditation, okay?

But she’s pretty sure it’s supposed to leave you feeling calmer and more focused at the end, and not to be corny or anything, but nothing focuses her like thinking about what she has with Jester.

Not that it isn’t confusing and complicated sometimes, and not that it isn’t more than a little intimidating to think about the implications of wanting to be with someone that you aren’t expecting to leave, and not that Jester isn’t sometimes absolutely, undoubtedly, the biggest obstacle to her ability to focus on anything else but- It’s just that Beau’s head gets so fucking full of questions sometimes. An endless, blisteringly loud cacophony of _What the fuck are we doing here?_ And _How the fuck can this possibly end well?._ Questions that she doesn’t and probably won’t ever have answers for.

Being with Jester quiets it, always. Not forever, and not completely, but enough.

As much as Jester is brightness and trickery and chaos through and through, for Beau, she’s clarity. 

So, yeah, Beau is thinking. About Jester.

She’s  _ meditating. _


End file.
